From ‘just learning’ to leading: Growing into identity action by action

Julie in the early 2000s, before transferring to Hunter College. (Photo credit: Micah Riot)

“Where might you want to go?” a kind Hunter College employee asked me. 

As a recent transfer student and under-resourced sophomore in New York City, my financial aid package included a “work-study” position: I could make a little pocket money working at Hunter while attending it. Looking through a white ring binder of choices, one possibility caught my eye.  

“How about the Hillel?” I asked. 

For those who know me now, this is a choice so unsurprising that it feels odd putting the words to the page. My life today is indelibly Jewish—professionally, personally, creatively. I would even work in the Hillel world later, at the Hillels of New York University (NYU) and Vanderbilt University, respectively. 

But it was not an obvious choice for me at the time. I had grown up in a secular home, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants who themselves had grown up under Communist rule; Jewish communal and religious life for them had been constrained and discouraged.  

I was drawn to do a work-study at Hunter Hillel because I had begun learning about Judaism the year before, with a wonderful young rabbi and his family at the Chabad of NYU. Through Shabbat services and dinners, parsha (Torah portion) classes, and social hookah nights, I had, bit by bit, started filling up my Jewish cup. Still, it was all very new. If someone would have jumped out of an alley then and shouted at me, “Are you a Jewish leader?” I would have replied in a rush: “What?! Of course not! I’m just learning!” 

Yet, at Hunter Hillel, through my work-study position, I became the first-ever Jewish Student Life Liaison at the dorms on 25th Street. I helped organize and launch regular, large Shabbat dinners at the dorms, which were a huge success. I supported Hunter Hillel staff on campus with tasks like designing fliers (perhaps in Microsoft Paint? This was a long time ago!).  

I gradually became more comfortable hanging out in the Hillel lounge with students whose Jewish lives, backgrounds, and practice were very different than mine. At first I joked that I was only at Hillel because they were literally paying me to be there. Eventually I didn’t need the comfort of the joke—I continued to stay active at Hillel long after my work-study position was over. 

At some unremarkable point, I did, indeed, become a leader at Hunter Hillel and at the dorms. But there was no one moment where that clearly and cleanly happened. And it’s likely my reply, on the eve of graduating college, to the question, “Are you a Jewish leader?” would have been “I guess so….” 

What strikes me now is not that I somehow grew into leadership roles despite feeling tentative and like I didn’t know enough, or that I didn’t yet fully belong. Now I feel that I grew into confidence and ownership because I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.  

This dynamic reminds me of the concept of “flow” in the field of positive psychology: a mental state where someone is fully immersed and energized by the task at hand. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who named the concept, we are more likely to reach a flow state when our skillset is well-matched to an activity and the activity also presents a higher-than-average challenge. 

In other words, when young adults try out leadership roles that feel a little too hard, or not quite what they would “usually do,” that isn’t risky; it’s important. Because each “I guess so” is a step toward the unremarkable day when we surprise ourselves with a different answer: “Yes—this is who I am.”